by
Sister Rebecca
Holy Wisdom Church
Our
Gospel today mentions the event of the circumcision. It says nothing more, other than that it happened,
and that Jesus was given the name the Angel had given him before he was
conceived.
Paul,
though, in the Epistle, describes for us the meaning and spiritual reality of
the circumcision. “For in Christ all the fullness of God lives in bodily form.
In him you were circumcised not performed by human hands.” He goes on to say that our former personal
identity ruled by our instincts has now been replaced by Christ. We hear from Paul elsewhere that we have
robed ourselves into Christ Jesus. The
word “robed” here is a symbol for embodiment. As God has taken flesh in Jesus,
in him we have become conscious that God takes flesh in us from the very
beginning of our existence and into this very moment. God embodies within us. Yet, our instincts, our unhealthy habits,
even addictions do not just go away. Awakening
is not yet transformation of our consciousness.
When we invite God into our lives, God works with us in meeting our
shadows…and here indeed is the encounter of darkness in all its shapes and shades.
But there is also our golden shadow of
our hidden gifts that we are fearful to face, and engage in. Let us recall here the Angel’s announcement
to Mary and her fear. But just as for
her, God does with us that which is impossible for us to accomplish alone.
In
pondering this reality, I have very much touched these days upon revisiting
anew a poem by Symeon the New Theologian 1000 years ago. I have strongly felt like sharing these words
with you this morning:
We awaken in Christ’s body as
Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ; He enters my foot and is
infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes
all of Him (for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood). I move my
foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning. Do my words seem
blasphemous? Then open your heart to Him, and let yourself receive the one who
is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside
Christ’s body where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is
realized in joy as Him, and He makes us utterly real, and everything that is
hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly,
irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light. We awaken as the Beloved in every part of our body.
—Quoted by Stephen Mitchell, The
Enlightened Heart. San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1989, pp. 38-39.
Symeon doesn’t urge us to merely honor or
love the Beloved Christ as though Christ were apart from ourselves, from a
distance; instead, my whole self becomes Christ.
This morning I put aside many other
thoughts, having a deep sense that this poem for me points to and expresses
best what the Nativity Gospels are really about.
As
we begin this New Year there is a certain feel of a timeless moment, and again I
find words from others. This time T.S. Elliot expresses the inexpressible:
With
the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We
shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate…
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate…
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
—T.S.
Eliot, Little Gidding. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1943.
